


The Wheel Goes 'Round

by cmk418



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29727150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmk418/pseuds/cmk418
Summary: Alvarez and Beecher through the years
Relationships: Miguel Alvarez & Tobias Beecher





	The Wheel Goes 'Round

_"Why do I always end up with the weirdos?"_ It wasn’t a comment Miguel was meant to overhear between Larry, the substance abuse counselor and Fielding, the unit manager in his cell block. But, with the first few weeks in a new place, Miguel knew that keeping his ears open would be a key to survival. Lardner wasn’t a lot different than the places he’d been in and out of in his youth, but it wasn’t Em City by a long shot. Miguel didn’t realize that he would miss it so much. _Fucking Keller._

He could have taken offense when Larry pulled him and Beecher out of the cell they shared with two other inmates. _We must be the weirdos,_ he thought with a grin. And it made sense with him still carrying the scar from slashing his own face and Beecher – well, once you get a reputation for trying to bite a guy’s dick off, the crazy stays with you. It’s fitting that they’re lumped together like this, the only guys that came off that particular bus to Oz that made it through to this moment.

Though he didn’t often admit it, Miguel Alvarez had a type when it came to prags. White guys with glasses that didn’t look too queer, too crazy, or too able to kick his ass in a fight. The first boy he’d taken into his protection in middle school was like that. The only white boy in a school full of Latinos, Alex stood out. Miguel took him aside for a price. The price wasn’t sexual – fuck that, Miguel was straight and there was nobody who would tell him otherwise. Guys like that, even down-on-their-luck types like Alex, always had access to money. And with money came power.

The quiet guy sitting a few feet away in the suit would fit the bill perfectly. Miguel leaned toward him, even smiling a little to put the man at ease.

"First time in Oz?" he asked.

The man looked a little insulted to be asked such a question, so Miguel continued. "It’s my first time. I’m not too worried about it though. Both my old man and his old man are in here, so it’s like following in the family business or something."

That earns him a bit of a laugh from the other man. Yeah, Miguel could see him loosening up somewhat. They got off the bus and went through processing. As soon as they got settled, he would…

The shank in the side took his mind away from the well-dressed man for a moment, but his last thought before he passed out was that it was a lousy way to make a first impression.

By the time he’d woken up in the infirmary, he knew his luck had run out with that one. Guys like him were pragged out as soon as they reached their cell block. Miguel halfway wondered if the man would survive it. The way he behaved after Miguel took the shank leaned toward "no".

When he was finally free to go to Em City, he looked for the other man. He found him soon enough, one Tobias Beecher, pragged out to some asshole in the Aryan brotherhood. He’d lost his window. It happened.

He kept an eye on Beecher, watching as the man was routinely humiliated by Schillinger and his pals. The cross-dressing incident definitely put the prag in a new light – those lips, done up like some whore’s. In Miguel’s mind, he could see Toby’s head bobbing up and down on his cock. Miguel actually suspected that he wasn’t the only con who jerked off to those thoughts that night. (To Miguel’s way of thinking, Beecher was wearing a dress and makeup at the time, so it didn’t exactly count as queer.)

He stopped having fantasies about Beecher sucking his dick after the Robson incident. That was sheer self-preservation. It didn’t stop him from wanting to take the man back under his protection, but with McManus’ new world order in Em City, arranging to have a Latino in the same pod as an Other was a little tricky. His crew wouldn’t understand why he would want to do such a thing. So he stood idly by when Beecher started hanging out with one of the new inmates, Chris Keller.

Miguel felt that something was "off" with Keller almost immediately. He wanted to warn Toby, but he had his own problems with El Cid that needed to be addressed. It was a pity that he was in solitary when his window to approach Beecher opened up again.

Toby was different when Miguel got back to Em City. More fierce, somehow. He wasn’t going to need someone to look after him, judging by the "Fuck off" he got when he asked Toby how he was doing. He would have liked to have put a shank in Keller for his treatment of Beecher, but it seemed that someone had beaten him to the punch. And now, Beecher had a prag of his own. It was a little funny how the wheel came round to deliver a Schillinger into Beecher’s hands. He wished the wheel would come round for him at some point.

Surprisingly, it did, giving him the sweet taste of freedom. People had thought he was crazy and the time in solitary came close to doing a number on him, but he was never so far gone to completely ignore when a way out of Oz showed up right in front of him. Thoughts of Beecher left behind, he could only concentrate on getting through one more day without being caught by the police or killed by one of El Cid’s guys.

Too soon though, he was back and the months that followed were a merry-go-round of trips between solitary and Em City. Beecher had been transferred to Unit J. After all of that trouble with Schillinger, McManus and Glynn finally got off their asses and made sure he was safe.

And then Toby was gone, getting the parole that Miguel so desperately wanted. Miguel could have been jealous, but after seeing so many inmates go out in body bags, it was a nice change to actually see someone make it out of Oz and the fact that that someone was Toby made it easier to take.

Miguel went on. He was staying on the straight and narrow in order to make parole on this next go-round. If he could prove himself, show that he’d reformed, he had a shot at it. He wouldn’t let Ruiz get the better of him this time. He was working in the infirmary when O’Reily mentioned that Beecher was on his way back to Oz. "Bullshit," he’d responded because there was no way that the system broke Toby that much. Beecher wasn’t a guy like Poet who would fuck up as soon as he got out because he was so used to life on the inside.

It was true. As soon as he saw Beecher up there on stage during rehearsals, all hope went out the window. If Beecher couldn’t make it on the outside, there was no way that Miguel could. The meeting with Ruiz just confirmed that for Miguel.

He was tired of everything, tired of Oz, tired of having to be strong all the time, tired of wanting to look out for Toby and not being able to. He could see how it would work, being on the flip side with someone like Torquemada taking the lead and looking out for him for a change. The D-tabs went down smoothly and he was finally able to let go.

The next few weeks passed in a haze. There was the play – he vaguely remembered opening the curtain and people moving around backstage. There was a moment that everything seemed to descend into chaos – he thought he heard Beecher’s voice calling for Doctor Nathan, but he couldn’t focus on anything until Ryan O’Reily’s mother shook him into full awareness. She gave him a concerned look before pulling away and attending to something that McManus wanted.

He was sitting in the quad when Toby strolled back into Em City. Miguel’s eyes followed Toby as he walked up the stairs and then as his little drama with Keller played its final scene. From where he sat, he couldn’t tell if Beecher shoved Keller over the railing or if Keller was pulling one last "fuck you" to his former lover. The D-tabs made all that unimportant.

Thankfully, Torquemada was coherent enough to get him on his feet when the alarms sounded. Miguel had no idea what the hell was going on only that he was on a bus again with Beecher heading out of Oz.

Only they weren’t being freed. They were just heading to another prison. The inmates were separated when they got into Lardner. He didn’t know where they took Torquemada, but for the second time in as many prisons, he was immediately stuck in the infirmary after processing.

A fat man named Larry came up to him and introduced himself as the drug counselor at Lardner. Larry explained that they were keeping Miguel there for a few days to wean him off the D-tabs. It was tricky stuff. He didn’t expect all the _feelings_ that flooded into his system that the pills had been holding back. The pain from the detox was almost as bad as when his baby died. He remembered being in the infirmary after the riots, watching Adebisi come down off the drugs. He wished someone here would help him like he helped Adebisi, but nobody here gave a shit.

"Alvarez," he heard, one word through the traffic of his thoughts. It sounded like Beecher’s voice. He knew there would be delusions coming down, but this seemed so real. He opened his eyes and looked at the man sitting next to him. Beecher smiled.

"Are we dead?" he asked.

Beecher laughed. "I’m sure we would have picked a better place to go in the afterlife than the infirmary at Lardner."

"I don’t know. Have you seen the nurses around here?"

"I think that’s the aftereffects of the detox. They don’t have anything on Doctor Nathan. Or even Sister Pete for that matter."

Miguel smiled and nodded.

"How are you feeling?" Beecher asked.

"Like you’re about to disappear at any second."

"Actually, you’ve got your walking papers." He indicated the prison uniform by Miguel’s bedside. "Since I’ve been here a whole five days, they wanted me to show you around."

Miguel laughed softly.

"What?"

"Nothing," answered Miguel.

Toby walked him out of the infirmary and to their cell block. Beecher pointed out various places – the laundry, the cafeteria, the library, and people that he thought might make good allies as well as others that Miguel should avoid. Miguel could not stop smiling.

Reality had flipped on its side and now it was Toby looking after him. Maybe this was the beginning of something, a weird sort of friendship where the two of them would watch each other’s backs with no other trade-offs or expectations. Whatever it was, this was definitely the longest conversation he and Beecher ever had.

Finally, Toby stopped at a cell. There were two men already inside, biker types, who glanced up at him and then resumed their card game.

"Here we are," said Toby. "Home, sweet home."


End file.
